


The Changeling Still Owed

by wyrm_n_sigun



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe, Gen, feral!Hiccup, raised by dragons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-22
Updated: 2014-08-22
Packaged: 2018-02-14 05:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2178849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wyrm_n_sigun/pseuds/wyrm_n_sigun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Sometimes the image of a youth would come to her, know her, call her "Mother". But he never stayed. </i>
</p><p> </p><p> <br/><i>She woke, tearless. </i></p><p> <br/><i>It had been seventeen years. </i><br/> </p><p> <br/> <br/>(AU: Cloudjumper took Hiccup instead.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Changeling Still Owed

It had never been much to hold onto, but she was a woman of faith and ponderings. Even years later, the part of her that was bright and young persisted, buried in her callouses. In the night, while her husband, rock-solid, doubted nothing even in the land of dreams, she would wonder.

Sometimes the image of a youth would come to her, know her, call her "Mother". But he never stayed.

She woke, tearless.

It had been fourteen years.

  
   
 

The cradle had been first to go. They wept in the ruin and watched it burn.

Maybe doing so had cursed them, because there were no more children.

  
   
 

She could not look at the sky whenever they arrived to fight. Hope and fury warred in her breast. She let them destroy each other.

He kissed her when he returned home, black with soot and warm with blood, and she trembled.

She asked him once which would he have had, had he the choice. In the fleck-second before the dragon grabbed, which of the two would Stoick have fain seen taken.

"Don't think of things that cannot be, my sweet," he said, and she never asked again.

  
   
 

He did not want to hear about the boy in her dreams, but he understood. He imagined too, a futile pain. When she had once been inconsolable in his arms, he asked her to describe their son to him, because she would not abide his nonexistence.

She could not picture him when waking. She had only said, "It's Hiccup." He touched her hair softly, and she gasped anguish. "He's ten years old tomorrow."

"I know."

"He doesn't -- he doesn't know, Stoick. It's his own birthday, and he doesn't know."

He wished again that there had been more children. Babies were lost every day to claws and the cold; this one should not have hurt her so.

Valka clutched his hand closer, and the memory of a gentle giant, looking only sweetness to her child, burned her heart through.

  
   
 

When it happened, she was not ready.

Stoick was too old to keep doing this, and she braved the battle to bring him home, before his back or the wrist sprain last spring or his short breath took him from her, too, in claws and flame.

And then, she saw the dragon.

In fourteen years, it had never returned once. She thought it had flown off the edge of the world, or to the highest reaches of Yggdrasil's branches to roost. But here it was again, as she remembered, blue and brown and crested proud, calling a challenge and spitting sparks at angry men waving axes. She could not move, either to start forward and demand her baby's return, or to run from the monster that threatened them.

The dragon reared with a violent eye, and warriors toppled. Blood-lust gripped it, its mouth curling unnaturally like Jormungandr around to swallow them all whole. No god came to save them, and three men swinging at its skin were ripped bloody asunder. Ten cried out underfoot, crushed in seconds. Sudden widows were weeping, even as they fought to the death. Valka was thirty-six years old, and she felt so. The light in her deepest reaches went out.

Stone and ice held her soul as she took an axe in hand, to face the flesh and fire that ate her only son.

She cried out rage and grief. Her husband called her name.

The dragon turned its bloody head, and saw her.

It roared. Her child was long dead.

But the snuffled candle smoked still in the dark, and the dragon's eye turned wide and kind upon her. It seized her in its claws.

Had she not been screaming for her life and the fast-disappearing ground, she would have wondered.

She reached for Stoick one last time.

  
   
 

Dragons have no names. Things are what they are, and everything is understood as such -- as it is. Even places are communicated through experiences: an island that smells always of smoke is referred to with grunts like flames; a cove with a bounty of fish is a sound like smacking tails in the water. A welcoming call announces a visitor. A lingering scent tells where one has been. The reminder of shared experience brings dragons in understanding together.

He had no name, but he was certainly known among the dragons of his nest. He was the hatchling that would not grow, the little one with no scales. They loved him, but they always mentioned him in the same ways: with a call like a scream, and a head gesture like a fall to certain death. It was a memory he did not relish.

When he was asked many winters later what his dragon family called him, the closest thing he summoned in human words was damning.

"Wingless."

He bit his little claws as he waited.

  
   
 

Valka trembled.

Scooped so in the dragon's talons, she sat in a crouch, huddled against the frigid air. The sky stretched below forever.

She breathed in desperate gasps and held the closest claw tight. The beast let her wriggle, but would not drop its charge. Were it not for the altitude, she would have been comfortable. A far-away flame made her wonder if the dragon had practice. Dusty hope sparked anew.

After untold hours, they pierced a sunburst in the hanging sky, blinding her. She blinked hard against the light, and before she could adjust they came upon a massive snowy mountain, ringed around with clouds and birds unafraid of heaven. They dove. The wind whistled like a war-cry, a funeral song.

Just as quickly, they landed.

The dragon let go and clicked away, watching her. She tried to stand, but her legs cramped. She lay down instead, and turned her head.

They were on a ledge some thousand leagues up, and a flock of birds and baby dragons played on the ever-most edge, cocking their heads at the breathless woman brought to them. They were not the dragon's brood, though, and no attempt to feed her to the little ones was made. She finally rolled up, and heaved to a stand. The blue and brown dragon was looking away, and into the darkness of a cave.

Valka gasped a cry as wing-beats behind her surged the air, and she was pushed forward. She stumbled and looked at the three returning dragons, come full of fish for feeding the babies. They chirped, and it sounded like the happiness of having family.

She grimaced and approached the dragon that brought her.

"You're not going to eat me, are you?" It turned at her words, stared her down with tip of the head. She swallowed. "I would very much like to not be eaten."

The dragon turned away, looking back down the narrow passageway. It called low, summoning other dragons, she supposed.

"Are -- are you the same dragon? The one... it was you, wasn't it? The one that came to our house? Fourteen years since?" She had no idea why she spoke to it. It passed half-glances at her as she continued to make noises it didn't understand. Maybe she had hoped it would.

Her face fell.

The dragon must have heard a response from within the tunnel, for in a swoop it took Valka by her cloak-collar. She cried out. It lifted her over and through the rocks, and into the passage; the three dragons on the ledge were watching her, and it was them she saw last as the entrance disappeared in blackness.

In the dark, there was only the hot breath of the beast that held her. Her heart fluttered, a baby bird falling off the dragons' mountain.

They mounted many obstacles and some pools of standing water glowed, wyrm magic she assumed, barely lighting the invisible path. The dragon must have had night-eyes, for it never once faltered. She swung helpless from its jaw, and wrung her hands.

The tunnel continued, but as she reflected on her approaching end, a low light far away appeared, obscured by many hanging and climbing rocks that dripped loud in the silent dark. The dragon's claws scraped across the stone, and Valka blinked as her eyes became useful again in the dim.

Then, in a patch of quiet as the dragon passed over a flat expanse, she heard the call of another dragon, at the light end of the cavern. And then another, and another, and more still. Though terrified, it was only one of their voices that was pounding her heart wild.

She listened. That was no dragon.

They came upon the exit in a leap and Valka was dropped to craggy stone, surrounded by an expectant herd. One member snuffed at her, and seemed to cackle. Covering her head in shaking hands, she could not help screaming.

The beasts gnashed and growled at her sound, but the blue and brown that brought her in snarled and snapped back, placing itself over her body. The little hall echoed wild with the sounds of their chatter. The dragons were holding conference, and eventually the blue-brown placated them. It shooed them off, and, though curious and grumbling, they slunk off to other roosting-places in the unknown dark. Valka raised her head at last, and the dragon stepped off of her.

She blinked. The dragon spat at a nearby stone, and it illuminated the cave's centre in an orange flame. The dragon looked at her, in anticipation, and Valka stood. She was waiting for the dragon to act, but she heard that sound again, that bark of a not-dragon, and turned, trembling.

It was still dark.

She squinted.

The blue-brown rumbled low behind her. Something beyond the light answered; it warbled, and then chattered suddenly. It did not move. The blue-brown snapped, and seemed to sigh. It bowed its head against Valka's back, and pushed her forward.

She made a sound of surprise. The creature in the dark waited.

"Hello?" She asked, a shaky whisper.

She got no reply. But the burning stone lit orange patches as the shadowed animal edged closer, and she took a step back as something with bristling fur began to emerge, growling softly.

Then, the light caught its scaleless limbs. Hairless knees.

It caught fingers.

She gasped.

Eyes, in the dark. No slits at all, but round, and green.

Wide.

She fumbled to the ground.

In all the nights she had seen her little Hiccup visit her, she had known him. She had never thought how; in that way one does when dreams feel real as breathing, she had seen him and simply accepted. But, now wakeful, she realized she did not recognize him.

It was not him she had seen. That ruddy youth had not existed but in her sleep.

This was a boy of a small stature, smaller even than the baby dragons nesting on the cliff. He was speckled over with thousands of spots, as many freckles as stars in the sky. His hair was not the red she had imagined, but rather an unremarkable brown. His jaw was only barely square. The nose was but a distant kin to her own. She recognized the eyes, though. She recognized a faint line by his mouth. She recognized the dragon that had raised him.

His face was lit full by the fire-light. He looked at her with a strange intensity, a perfect blankness in his intent brow. Her face twisted, but his remained illegible.

Valka extended her freezing fingers gently, slowly, quietly. She wanted him to see her hands, how they matched his, splayed on the ground where he walked four-legged. Her son was still only crawling. Her breath felt loud in the silence.

He watched her hand as it came to his face, to touch the tiny scar that proved him to be her baby. Her fingers stayed. He made a sound like a mumble.

He took her lingering hand in his and examined it, and she saw in pain that his own were small even compared to hers. His fingers were rough. His nails were all sizes, some curled long like talons, and others short and bitten. She jerked. His hands closed sudden over hers as he looked up.

She was crying.

He watched.

Valka's baby boy had been sickly. Her imagination, always showing her a healthy youth, played foul. Truth was crueler; of course this tiny thing was hers.

Her only sounds were soft sobs, wordless pain and bleary tears, and she wondered if he understood them.

He tilted his head. Her expression crumbled, and she sobbed anew.

Had she been watching him then, she'd have seen a perfectly human look of empathy. She'd have seen him lean forward to nudge her softly, but then retreat, unsure again. He took a breath, and settled for extending a dirty hand. Light as air, he brushed her mouth just where she had touched his.

She cried harder, and he took his hand away. She was covering her face still, clutching it, digging pain with her fingernails. He looked at her, one hand on the stone, another curled useless in his lap.

He began to cry too.

He made no sound, no sobs or gasps, but he sniffed hard. She looked up. While she had hidden her eyes in shame, he let the tears fall. His face was still but for a pinched brow.

"You don't even know who I am," she whispered. "Why do you cry, then?"

He didn't answer. Her child could still not speak.

The blue-and-brown dragon behind her, standing watchful over the pair, purred, snuffed against the boy's hair. He looked up, and hummed. His tears ebbed.

Valka was far lost on a blustery island, watching a youth she didn't know be comforted by their kind's mortal enemy. The beast that had carried him away from her.

"Why did you have to take him from me?" She asked into her brimming hands, addressing at once the dragon, Fate, and the gods.

She wished to wake. This was the only dream where she did not relish seeing Hiccup.

He edged to her again, and this time he kept his hands on the ground. He nudged her shoulder and neck with the crown of his head, like a dragon. She took his little shoulders in hand; he stiffened, and the dragon barked a warning at her, but the boy didn't flee. He made a sound like a purr, as his dragon-parent had done, and when her arms wrapped full around him he allowed her to hold him immobile. The dragon was agitated, though, and after a moment took him from her grasp.

"No! I -- I'm not going to hurt him, he's my son!"

The dragon roared back, standing protective over the youth crouched low. Valka reached for him, cried for her baby again.

The boy growled reproach, and wriggled out from under his dragon-parent's belly. He snapped and grumbled in irritation, and she could have sworn he pouted. He was a teenager despite his stature, she remembered.

The dragon drew up and puffed out its chest, and admonished him with a chatter. He did not budge, but gestured with a flapping hand towards Valka. The dragon looked between her and him, and its eye softened. It looked away. The youth mumbled. They shared a long glance. The dragon grunted, an almost question, and its hatchling human hummed. A promise, and thanks.

He pressed his face to the dragon's snout. He was so small.

When he came to Valka's outstretched hand and glanced back at his dragon-parent for assurance, she understood.

Of course he knew her. She was not here by accident.

She looked at his face, young still and rosy, if alien in its movements, and remembered lightness in her heart.

The wondering moment broke as Valka's empty stomach rumbled, and she sat stiff, embarrassed. Hiccup looked at her and her middle with a blank face, and then he threw back his head -- and laughed.

His laugh rung golden in the dwindling light, and she smiled for the first time. His teeth were all too large for his mouth. Despite the dragon-sounds he spoke, his voice was perfectly normal. It had dropped already, but teetered still on manhood.

He sounded just like Stoick, when young.

He turned and grunted at his dragon-parent, who snapped amusement and consternation and a short goodbye as it crept back to the tunnel, to return to the mountain's entrance, to hunt.

Valka looked at her son.

Hiccup beckoned her further into the dark with two hands, raising himself pigeon-toed to stand. He smiled, hopeful. Welcoming and willing, ready to relearn his mother.

She followed him.

  
   
 


End file.
